Today, we identify service articles published in Marketing, Management, Operations, Productions, Information Systems, and Practitioner-Oriented Journals in the last months.
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Huang, M.-H. and R. T. Rust (2024): The Caring Machine: Feeling AI for Customer Care, Journal of Marketing, 88(4189), pp.1-23
Customer care is important for its role in relationship building. This role has traditionally been performed by human customer agents; however, the emergence of interactive generative AI (GenAI) shows potential for using AI for customer care in emotionally charged interactions. Bridging practice and the academic literatures in marketing and computer science, this article develops an AI-enabled customer care journey, from accurate emotion recognition to empathetic response, emotional management support, and, finally, the establishment of an emotional connection. Marketing requirements for each of the stages are derived from in-depth interviews with top managers and a survey of chief marketing officers. By juxtaposing these requirements against the current feeling capabilities of GenAI, the authors highlight the technological challenges engineers must tackle. The article concludes with a set of marketing tenets for implementing and researching the caring machine. These include verifying emotion recognition accuracy using marketing emotion theories through multiple emotion signals and methods, utilizing prompt engineering to enhance GenAI?s emotion understanding, employing ?response engineering? to personalize emotion management recommendations, and strategically deploying GenAI for emotional connection to simultaneously enhance customer emotional well-being and customer lifetime value.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00222429231224748 [Google]
Abell, A., C. Morgan and M. Romero (2024): The Power of a Star Rating: Differential Effects of Customer Rating Formats on Magnitude Perceptions and Consumer Reactions, Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 61(4190), pp.1041-1057
Average product ratings are displayed on many major websites, including online retailers, search engines, and social media sites. Research in both academia and industry has shown that consumers rely heavily on product ratings when making purchase decisions. Websites may show customer ratings in different shapes, colors, or formats. For example, some websites present their rating in a numerical format (e.g., 4.0/5) while others utilize an analog format (e.g.,). The present research investigates how a website’s rating presentation may influence magnitude perceptions of the rating, which subsequently affect choices and purchase intentions. The authors propose and find that when the average customer rating is at or above the midpoint (i.e.,.5–.9) of each rating level (i.e., 1–5 on a five-point scale), the numerical (vs. analog) rating format is perceived to be lower in magnitude due to left-digit anchoring, leading to differences in choice likelihood, purchase intent, and ad click likelihood for products and services. Across nine experiments, including an eye-tracking study and a multiple-ad study without holdout, the findings show robust evidence for the proposed effect.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00222437241240694 [Google]
Grewal, D., C. B. Satornino, T. Davenport and A. Guha (2024): How generative AI Is shaping the future of marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (4191), pp.1-21
Generative AI (Gen AI) is shaping the future of marketing. In the next decade, Gen AI will influence how marketers interact and communicate with customers, help create and deliver marketing content (text, images, and video), and inform methods for researching and developing new products and services. In both service and sales settings, Gen AI will affect customers directly and significantly. Therefore, marketers, researchers, and public policy makers require a clear understanding of Gen AI and its potential, as well as its limitations. To assist marketers in thinking through the adoption and implementation of Gen AI, the current article presents a four-quadrant organizing framework that highlights trade-offs in both the nature of Gen AI inputs and the extent of human augmentation needed to deliver Gen AI–generated outputs. This framework provides guidance for the selection and implementation of Gen AI tools, as well as recommendations for further research.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01064-3 [Google]
Wang, P. and M. C. Dong (2024): The role of performance reward discrepancies in driving dealers’ servitization, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(4192), pp.671-686
Although servitization is increasingly popular in manufacturing industries, little is known about how manufacturers can compel their dealers to cooperate with the servitization process to the same degree. Drawing on social comparison theory, we propose that a dealer will adjust its servitization level according to the reward discrepancy , or the difference between its annual reward, allocated by the manufacturer depending on the dealer’s performance in the past year, and the reference level in the distribution network. We empirically test this hypothesis with a unique archival dataset of the dealer network of a major automobile manufacturer and supplement it with a scenario-based experiment as a robustness check. We find a significant association between a dealer’s reward discrepancy and servitization, such that the more the dealer’s reward exceeds (falls below) the average, the more the dealer tends to increase (decrease) its engagement in service relative to sales. The findings are robust, with the average being defined in either the national or local scope. This research offers important implications for managers of both manufacturers and dealers.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.01.001 [Google]
Huang, B., A. Suri, A. Tezer and S. Sénécal (2024): This is not mine anymore: The dark side of collaborative consumption, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(4193), pp.616-631
Extant research on collaborative consumption in the sharing economy generally focuses on consumers (those who consume such services) while overlooking an important actor: the peer service providers (those who provide these services by sharing their resources with other consumers). Through four studies, we show a potential detrimental side effect of collaborative consumption. Specifically, our results suggest that for peer service providers, sharing their assets leads to a greater perceived loss of psychological ownership of these assets. This phenomenon thus results in a potentially unsustainable outcome: faster disposal of the shared assets. The authors further show that this effect disappears when the asset is shared with in-group (vs. out-group) members. Lastly, the authors offer a practical and easily implementable solution that could avert this potentially detrimental phenomenon: To encourage service providers to personalize their assets, which restores their perceived psychological ownership. Together, these results advance the literature on the dark side of collaborative consumption and offer managerial insights into mitigating strategies.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.05.002 [Google]
Sheng, M. L., N. Natalia and E. Z. Rusfian (2024): AI Chatbot, Human, and In‐Between: Examining the Broader Spectrum of Technology‐Human Interactions in Driving Customer‐Brand Relationships Across Experience and Credence Services, Psychology & Marketing, (4194), pp.1
ABSTRACT Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have driven companies to incorporate AI chatbots into service encounters. However, research exploring how to balance human and AI interactions in service encounters for brand‐building strategies remains limited. Grounded in social response theory and the attachment‐aversion model of consumer‐brand relationships, this study examines the effect of different service chat agent types (substitution chatbot, augmentation chatbot, and human chat agent) on brand usage intention, with brand‐self distance and consumer brand engagement as mediating mechanisms. Service types (experience vs. credence service) act as boundary conditions moderating the relationship between service chat agents and brand‐self distance. Through two experiments involving actual interactions with three types of service chat agents, the results show that substitution chatbots negatively influence consumers’ perceived brand‐self distance, engagement, and usage intention across both service types. For experience services, augmentation chatbots lead to a closer brand‐self distance than human chat agents, enhancing consumer brand engagement and brand usage intention. While for credence services, augmentation chatbots perform comparably to human chat agents. The results offer guidance for service managers and policymakers on optimizing the balance between human and technological inputs to enhance customer‐brand relationships.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22165 [Google]
Branca, G., M. Grosso and S. Castaldo (2024): Value through diversity: A systematic literature review to understand diversity and inclusion in consumer research, Psychology & Marketing, 41(4195), pp.2854-2873
Embracing diversity and promoting inclusion is a critical challenge for marketers to meet the diverse consumers’ needs and have a positive social impact. Despite increasing attention to diversity and inclusion, and calls to address inequalities, there appears to be a lack of a thorough understanding of diversity and inclusion in consumer research, and how marketing can effectively contribute to an inclusive and equity‐oriented society. Previous reviews and conceptual articles often focus on specific types of diversity or contexts. This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of diversity and inclusion in consumer research through a systematic literature review of 52 articles combined with the theory, context, characteristics, and methodology (TCCM) framework. Our findings highlight that companies can actively foster inclusion and enhance equity through their policies, also by addressing stigmatization and marginalization. A conceptual framework outlines the impacts of these policies on individuals, society, and company performances, followed by a detailed research agenda for future studies. This article emphasizes the role of marketing in fostering inclusion but also stimulates practitioners to contribute through policies beyond representation and advertising, such as service and product design, and ensuring vulnerable consumers access to resources.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22088 [Google]
Feng, Y., X. Lu and X. Zhang (2024): MUTUAL DISCLOSURES AND CONTENT INTIMACY IN USER ENGAGEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM AN ONLINE CHAT GROUP, MIS Quarterly, 48(4196), pp.1331-1362
This paper investigates the role of self-disclosure in online chat groups (OCGs), which serve as a communication channel situated between public platforms and private live chats. Our investigation delves into the effects of mutual disclosures, originating from other members and focal users, on user engagement in terms of promptness, positivity, and effort. We also explore the disclosure content and the interplay between mutual disclosures regarding consistency in content intimacy. Using data from a retailer utilizing OCGs for customer service, our findings reveal that mutual disclosures are positively associated with user engagement through the mechanism of liking and uncover multifaceted influences from content intimacy consistency between mutual disclosures. The results are further verified by a controlled experiment and various robustness tests. Moreover, our study differentiates and discusses the roles of group hosts and peer users in facilitating OCG engagement. This research broadens our understanding of how self-related information exchange in online group conversations promotes meaningful engagement. Our fine-grained analysis of disclosure interactions provides clear guidance for firms to strategically manage customer relationships through OCGs and sheds new light on conversational commerce.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.25300/misq/2023/17481 [Google]
Rosokha, Y. and C. Wei (2024): Cooperation in Queueing Systems, Management Science, 70(4197), pp.7597-7616
We study a social dilemma in a single-queue system in which human servers have discretion over the effort with which to process orders that arrive stochastically. We show theoretically that the efficient outcome in the form of high effort can be sustained in the subgame-perfect equilibrium if the interactions are long term (even when each server has a short-term incentive to free-ride and provide low effort). In addition, we show that queue visibility plays an important role in the type of strategies that can sustain a high-effort equilibrium. In particular, we show that limiting feedback about the current state of the queue may be beneficial if the expected duration of interaction is long. We conduct two controlled laboratory experiments to test the theoretical predictions and find that effort increases with the expected duration of an interaction. We also find that visibility has a strong impact on the strategies that human subjects use to provide effort in a dynamic setting. We discuss implications for managers and firms that are trying to improve service systems. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.00603.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.00603 [Google]
Liu, Z., A. Brandon-Jones and C. Vasilakis (2024): Unpacking patient engagement in remote consultation, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 44(4198), pp.157-194
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine patient engagement in remote consultation services, an increasingly important issue facing Healthcare Operations Management (HOM) given the significant expansion in this and other forms of telehealth worldwide over the last decade. We use our analysis of the literature to develop a comprehensive framework that incorporates the patient journey, multidimensionality, antecedents and consequences, interventions and improvement options, as well as the cyclic nature of patient engagement. We also propose measures suitable for empirical assessment of different aspects of our framework. Design/methodology/approach: We undertook a comprehensive review of the extant literature using a systematic review approach. We identified and analysed 63 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 2003 and 2022. Findings: We conceptualise patient engagement with remote consultation across three key aspects: dimensions, process, and the antecedents and consequences of engagement. We identify nine contextual categories that influence such engagement. We propose several possible metrics for measuring patient engagement during three stages (before service, at/during service and after service) of remote consultation, as well as interventions and possible options for improving patient engagement therein. Originality/value: The primary contribution of our research is the development of a comprehensive framework for patient engagement in remote consultation that draws on insights from literature in several disciplines. In addition, we have linked the three dimensions of engagement with the clinical process to create a structure for future engagement assessment. Furthermore, we have identified impact factors and outcomes of engagement in remote consultation by understanding which can help to improve levels of adoption, application and satisfaction, and reduce healthcare inequality. Finally, we have adopted a “cyclic” perspective and identified potential interventions that can be combined to further improve patient engagement in remote consultation.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-03-2023-0188 [Google]
Bustinza, O. F., F. Vendrell-Herrero, P. Davies and G. Parry (2024): Testing service infusion in manufacturing through machine learning techniques: looking back and forward, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 44(4199), pp.127-156
Purpose: Responding to calls for deeper analysis of the conceptual foundations of service infusion in manufacturing, this paper examines the underlying assumptions that: (i) manufacturing firms incorporating services follow a pathway, moving from pure-product to pure-service offerings, and (ii) profits increase linearly with this process. We propose that these assumptions are inconsistent with the premises of behavioural and learning theories. Design/methodology/approach: Machine learning algorithms are applied to test whether a successive process, from a basic to a more advanced offering, creates optimal performance. The data were gathered through two surveys administered to USA manufacturing firms in 2021 and 2023. The first included a training sample comprising 225 firms, whilst the second encompassed a testing sample of 105 firms. Findings: Analysis shows that following the base-intermediate-advanced services pathway is not the best predictor of optimal performance. Developing advanced services and then later adding less complex offerings supports better performance. Practical implications: Manufacturing firms follow heterogeneous pathways in their service development journey. Non-servitised firms need to carefully consider their contextual conditions when selecting their initial service offering. Starting with a single service offering appears to be a superior strategy over providing multiple services. Originality/value: The machine learning approach is novel to the field and captures the key conditions for manufacturers to successfully servitise. Insight is derived from the adoption and implementation year datasets for 17 types of services described in previous qualitative studies. The methods proposed can be extended to assess other process-based models in related management fields (e.g., sand cone).
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-02-2023-0121 [Google]
Xie, S., S. Sharma, A. Mehra and A. Aziz (2024): Strategic Expectation Setting of Delivery Time on Marketplaces, Information Systems Research, 35(4200), pp.1965-1980
Delivery speed is an essential component of the service provided by online delivery platforms. Because improving actual delivery speed is expensive, platforms can instead create a perception of faster delivery by showing a conservative estimate of the delivery duration when a customer places an order. We use detailed transaction-level data from a major food delivery marketplace to examine the effects of setting conservative delivery speed expectations on customers’ likelihood of future purchases and restaurant choices. When delivery is faster than expected, we find that customers are more likely to purchase again from the platform and the same (focal) restaurant they ordered from. However, we find no significant effect on future purchases from other (nonfocal) restaurants. This is possibly because of a spillover effect, as customers may switch to other restaurants. Our findings thus highlight the effect of setting conservative expected delivery times in a platform setting. Finally, we investigate the trade-off between current and future demand because of setting of a conservative estimated delivery time and show that the gain in future demand is greater than the loss in current demand, establishing the efficacy of our suggested strategy. Delivery speed is an essential component of the service provided by online delivery platforms. Because improving actual delivery speed is expensive, platforms can instead create a perception of faster delivery by showing a conservative estimate of the delivery duration when a customer places an order. We use detailed transaction-level data from a major food delivery platform to examine the effects of setting conservative delivery speed expectations on customers’ likelihood of future purchases and restaurant choices. When delivery is slower (faster) than expected, we find that customers are less (more) likely to purchase again from the platform and the focal (same) restaurant they ordered from. A reduction in purchases from the platform is expected to reduce purchases from nonfocal (other) restaurants as well; however, we find no significant impact. This is possibly because of a spillover effect, as customers may switch their purchasing to these restaurants. Our findings thus highlight the effect of setting conservative expected delivery times in a platform setting. Additionally, we provide evidence that customers with a consistent past delivery experience are less responsive to a single instance of positive or negative delivery performance. We further find heterogeneous effects of slower/faster than expected delivery on new versus existing customers and orders with zero versus nonzero delivery charges. These results suggest that the strategy to set conservative expected delivery times can be judiciously implemented for consumer segments for whom future demand is more likely to improve with a better delivery experience. Finally, we examine the trade-off between current and future demand with the setting of a conservative estimated delivery time. We do additional analysis and also conduct an experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk to show that the gain in future demand is more than the loss in current demand, thus establishing the efficacy of our suggested strategy. History: Ram Gopal, Senior Editor; Idris Adjerid, Associate Editor. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.0497.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.0497 [Google]
Li, H., J. Peng, G. Wang and X. Bai (2024): The Impact of Process- vs. Outcome-Oriented Reviews on the Sales of Healthcare Services, Information Systems Research, 35(4201), pp.1909-1927
With the rise of digital health platforms, consumers increasingly rely on online reviews when choosing healthcare services. Understanding how these reviews shape consumer decisions is crucial for both platforms and healthcare providers. To explore this, we analyzed a comprehensive data set from a leading online cosmetic surgery platform to understand how process-oriented (focusing on the recovery experience) and outcome-oriented (focusing on the end results) reviews influence the demand for healthcare services. Our findings reveal a striking disparity in the effectiveness of these two types of reviews. Generally, outcome-oriented reviews exhibit greater efficacy in boosting sales. However, the influence of each review type varies with the complexity and popularity of the services. Process-oriented reviews are more compelling for complex healthcare services, while outcome-oriented reviews prove more impactful for simpler, popular services. These insights underscore the need for tailored strategies in incentivizing and managing consumer reviews, vital for healthcare providers and digital health platforms. Furthermore, for policy makers, the study highlights the importance of regulating and guiding online review designs to ensure they accurately reflect the service process and outcome, aiding consumers in making informed decisions. The consumption of services inherently requires a process to achieve the desired outcome. For nonexperiential services (e.g., healthcare and education) primarily valued for their end outcomes, their consumption typically involves lengthy processes that are not designed for enjoyment (e.g., wound care and lecture attendance). Consequently, there exists a prominent tension between the processes (means) and outcomes (ends) of these services, which is largely ignored in the prior literature on user-generated content (UGC) that predominantly focuses on products (e.g., books and electronics) or experiential services (e.g., dining and lodging). To bridge this gap, we investigate the distinct roles of process- and outcome-oriented reviews in influencing consumers’ decisions to pursue healthcare services, leveraging a comprehensive data set collected from an online platform for cosmetic procedures. By separating process- and outcome-oriented reviews through visual content analysis, we show that the effect of outcome-oriented reviews in boosting the sales of healthcare services is almost twice stronger than that of process-oriented reviews on average. However, the relative effectiveness of these two types of reviews varies substantially across different types of healthcare services. Specifically, we find that process-oriented reviews are more influential in affecting consumers’ purchases of services with higher complexity, in contrast to outcome-oriented reviews that are more impactful for services with lower complexity. Moreover, the impact of process-oriented reviews is stronger for less popular services, whereas the impact of outcome-oriented reviews is stronger for more popular services. These nuanced findings show that consumers resort to different types of UGC while considering different types of healthcare services. Our work has important implications both theoretically and practically. History: Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang, Senior Editor; Khim Yong Goh, Associate Editor. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2019.0168.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2019.0168 [Google]
Gol, E. S., M. Avital and M.-K. Stein (2024): Crowdworking: Nurturing Expert-Centric Absorptive Capacity, Information Systems Research, 35(4202), pp.1657-1680
Organizations increasingly engage with external communities for value generation through an ever-growing multitude of digital services. Absorptive capacity, or the organizational capability to identify, assimilate, and apply new knowledge for commercial ends, is a key determinant of how organizations successfully generate value from external sources of knowledge and sustain a competitive advantage. Crowdworking—a novel form of digitally mediated work—allows organizations to hire on-demand highly skilled external experts to leverage their knowledge, skills, and networks. The approach of integrating crowdworking into organizations is increasingly gaining traction among large corporations seeking to harness the knowledge in external communities for value generation. Building on an in-depth embedded case study in a large organization that relies on two established crowdwork platforms, we explore and shed light on how the organization developed its crowdworking-related absorptive capacity to generate value from external experts. The paper offers new insights into the prevailing modus operandi related to harnessing external knowledge in today’s organizations. Absorptive capacity, or the organizational capability to identify, assimilate, and apply new knowledge for commercial ends, is a key determinant of how organizations successfully generate value from external sources of knowledge and sustain a competitive advantage. Crowdworking—a novel form of digitally mediated work—allows organizations to hire on-demand highly skilled external experts to leverage their knowledge, skills, and networks. The approach of integrating crowdworking into organizations is increasingly gaining traction among large corporations seeking to harness the knowledge in external communities for value generation. Building on an in-depth embedded case study in a large organization that relies on two established crowdwork platforms, we explore how the organization developed its crowdworking-related absorptive capacity to generate value from external experts. We find that the crowdworking-related absorptive capacity phenomenon is a particular instance of expert-centric absorptive capacity that organizations develop by retaining on-demand external experts. We also find that this capacity can be developed through two idiosyncratic configurations of orchestrated and distributed routines that integrate external experts and utilize their knowledge in the host organization. These findings offer new insights into the prevailing modus operandi related to harnessing external knowledge in today’s organizations. History: Manju Ahuja, Senior Editor; Walter Fernandez, Associate Editor.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0413 [Google]
Keppler, S. M. and K. R. Smilowitz (2024): Time is Not Money: Time Logics and Workforce Operations Within School–Nonprofit Relationships, Production & Operations Management, 33(4203), pp.2362-2380
Nonprofit organizations amplify impact through relationships with K-12 schools, and these schools benefit from provided resources and services. Nonprofit provision of resources and services via schools is theoretically mutually beneficial, efficient, and effective. In practice, however, schools struggle to make the necessary investments to maintain relationships. Why? Through an inductive multimethods study of 81 nonprofit organizations and nine schools that partner with them, we find that schools struggle because it is difficult to effectively manage the temporal costs of the relationships. Principals, teachers, and staff have many demands on their time, and spending additional time coordinating and administrating nonprofit relationships is a challenge. Intersecting survey, interview, and archival data from schools and nonprofit organizations, we find the nine schools take on this operational challenge of managing temporal costs with one of two time logics, defined as a sociocultural belief about time resources at the school. The three charter schools in our study have a fixed logic that views time as a static resource, while the public and Catholic schools have an adaptable logic that views time as a flexible resource. We observe that these logics correspond to the school’s workforce operations, specifically whether or not they rely on external affiliates, such as district/community leaders or parents, to dedicate time to help manage school–nonprofit relationships. Schools with an adaptable-time logic have more time flexibility for managing nonprofit relationships when they rely on this external “workforce” compared to schools with a fixed-time logic that do not. The evidence suggests more generally how organizational culture and time logics relate to workforce operations. We conclude with preliminary evidence of long-term relationship outcomes from a follow-up survey of the same schools in our original study and discuss the implications for improving nonprofit provision of resources and services via schools.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241270129 [Google]